About Rationally Speaking

Rationally Speaking is a blog maintained by Prof. Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York. The blog reflects the Enlightenment figure Marquis de Condorcet's idea of what a public intellectual (yes, we know, that's such a bad word) ought to be: someone who devotes himself to "the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government, and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them." You're welcome. Please notice that the contents of this blog can be reprinted under the standard Creative Commons license.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Good point, Dr. Sagan!

I finally got around to reading Carl Sagan’s The Variety of Scientific Experience, a volume edited by his wife, Ann Druyan, and based on a series of Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology that Carl delivered in 1985 at the University of Glasgow. The title of the book is a direct reference, and gentle challenge, to William James’s somewhat frustrating The Variety of Religious Experience (also based on a series of lectures, those presented at the University of Edinburgh in 1901). Although James’ text is a classic in psychology and philosophy, James drew a rather simplistic distinction between what he called “healthy minds” and “sick souls,” both analyzed in terms of empowering religious experiences. Not to mention, of course, that he sarcastically suggested to his audience of scientists that their atheism was perhaps a result of a malfunction of their liver.

At any rate, Sagan’s essays are about the relationship between science and religion from a point of view very different from that of James. At the same time, it is so refreshing to read the words of a positive atheist, which do not in the least resemble the angry and inflated rhetoric of a Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins. On the contrary, Sagan’s tone is always measured and humble, and yet he delivers (metaphorically) mortal blow after mortal blow to the religious in his audience.

The science in the book is unavoidably a bit dated (though Druyan added notes here and there to update a few of the statements of fact). Then again, these essays are not about science per se, but about the meaning of science in our lives, and its conflict with the religious mind set. There are many precious passages that deserve thoughtful consideration, but one in particular struck me early on in the book (chapter 1). Sagan is talking about the sheer vastness of space: about a hundred billion stars just in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, which is one of more than 400 billion galaxies in the universe. That universe measures 46.5 billion light years across, and contains something of the order of 10 to the 80 atoms. Oh, and most of it is either empty or filled with dark stuff that is not part of galaxies, stars or planets.

After contemplating all this for a moment, Sagan says: “And this vast number of worlds, the enormous scale of the universe, in my view has been taken into account, even superficially, in virtually no religion, and especially no Western religions.” That seems exactly right, and something that is hardly discussed even in debates between atheists and theists: human religions are completely oblivious to the enormity of space. There is much talk about “intelligent design” and “anthropic principles” and other fanciful notions concocted to convince us that there is scientific evidence that this whole shebang was put in place by someone just so that we would eventually appear (and what a beautiful result he got for all his efforts!).

But Sagan’s observation makes it very clear that these people have no idea in what sort of place we really live. As Douglas Adams famously put it in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.” Indeed. What sort of intelligent engineer would create a contraption (the universe) that takes upwards of 13 billion years to generate Homo sapiens, all the while wasting 99.999999999999+ percent of the space in the universe? Or maybe, suggests Sagan, this vast amount of space and time hasn’t been wasted, and God has created many other worlds with people. But in that case, did Jesus come and die on the cross in every single one of them? Are there separate Hells and Heavens for different species of ET? The theological implications are staggering, and yet completely unaddressed.

Ah, the religious will say, but who are we to question God’s plan? He (or she, or it, as Sagan repeatedly writes) notoriously works in mysterious ways. But that is the ultimate cop out. It is simply a fancy, and frankly insulting, way to say “I haven’t the foggiest idea.” People have a right to believe whatever inane story they like to believe (as long as they do not try to impose it on others), but many religious people since Thomas Aquinas actually want to argue that their beliefs are also rational, that there is no contradiction between the book of nature and those of scripture. If so, then they need to answer Sagan’s question about why it is that the so-called holy books don’t tell us anything at all about how the universe really is.

Sagan imagines how God could have dictated his books to the ancient prophets in a way that would have certainly made an impact on us moderns. He could have said (I’m quoting Sagan directly here): “Don’t forget, Mars is a rusty place with volcanoes. ... You’ll understand this later. Trust me. ... How about, ‘Thou shalt not travel faster than light?’ ... Or ‘There are no privileged frames of reference.’ Or how about some equations? Maxwell’s laws in Egyptian hieroglyphics or ancient Chinese characters or ancient Hebrew.” Now that would be impressive, and even Dawkins would have to scratch his head at it. But no, instead we find trivial stories about local tribes, a seemingly endless series of “begats,” and a description of the world as small, young, and rather flat.

Sagan’s challenge is virtually ignored by theologians the world over. And for good reason: it is impossible to answer coherently while retaining the core of most religious traditions. The various gods people worship are simply far too small for the universe we actually inhabit, which is no surprise once we accept the rather obvious truth that it is us who made the gods in our image, not the other way around. We miss you, Carl.

78 comments:

Great post. I read that book about a year ago and it quickly became one of my favorites. As Carl Sagan was, I'm always impressed with how provincial (cosmically speaking) our human ideas tend to be. Not just religion, but religion is a great example. We all tend to imagine ourselves at the center of everything - naturally, because we have almost no experience of anything beyond the surface of this planet. Almost no one takes the cosmic perspective, perhaps because from such a perspective, most of our silly ideas are so obviously silly.

Excellent post. The Varieties of Scientific Experience is one of my favorite books.

And you're exactly right that many theologians and religious philosophers are cagey on the topic of the immensity of the universe in comparison to the embarrassing anthropocentrism of religion. The one's who do seem to address it (Tillich, perhaps) come precariously close to atheism.

I think my favorite line in that book is the bit during the Q & A section where Sagan says in response to a question about Democritus, "you will not exceed me in my admiration for Democritus." I'm not sure exactly why, but that just jumps out at me everytime I think about it.

My next favorite part is from the introduction by Druyan:

In [the] same drawer where the transcript of these lectures were rediscovered, there was a sheaf of notes intended for a book we never had the chance to write. Its working title was Ethos, and it would have been our attempt to synthesize the spiritual perspectives we derived from the revelations of science. We collected filing cabinets' worth of notes and references on the subject. Among them was a quotation Carl had excerpted from Gottfried Leibniz (1646 - 1716), the mathematical and philosophical genius, who had invented differential and integral calculus independently of Isaac Newton. Leibniz argued that God should be the wall that stopped all further questioning, as he famously wrote in this passage from Principles of Nature and Grace:

"Why does something exist rather than nothing? For 'nothing' is simpler than 'something.' Now this sufficient reason for the existence of the universe ... which has no need of any other reason ... must be a necessary being, else we should not have sufficient reason with which we could stop."

And just beneath the typed quote, three small handwritten words in red pen, a message from Carl to Leibniz and to us: "So don't stop."

Ah, the religious will say, but who are we to question God’s plan? He (or she, or it, as Sagan repeatedly writes) notoriously works in mysterious ways. But that is the ultimate cop out. It is simply a fancy, and frankly insulting, way to say “I haven’t the foggiest idea.” People have a right to believe whatever inane story they like to believe (as long as they do not try to impose it on others),

If I didn't know better, I'd say this was a Dawkins quote with its abrupt dismissal of theological arguments. I'm a bit lost as to the vitriol directed at him. How is what you said different from what Dawkins says Massimo? Perhaps it's a matter of style. I thought Demon Haunted universe was ho-hum and a tad interminable. (I didn't finish it). I was stimulated by The God Delusion and started learning philosophy because of it. The animosity towards Dawkins seems unwarranted.

I'll leave Hitchens to one side, not because I think he's bad, he does a great job of deflating pompous ignormami with his barbs, but because he's not a scientist but a polemicist.

yes, my disagreement with Dawkins is largely a matter of style. Though I think he overestimates the power of science and does not give its due to philosophy (his not at all new "argument from improbability" in The God Delusion is simply Occasm's razor, which means it is philosophy, not science).

As for Hitchens, I occasionally enjoy his writings, but talk about a pompous (and often drunk) ass...

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I've yet to read this book, and while I'm to young to have benefited in the same way from Sagan, his voice is still one I find very comforting and his words engaging. I often find myself excoriating my peers for having no idea who Sagan is.

Massimo wrote: yes, my disagreement with Dawkins is largely a matter of style. Though I think he overestimates the power of science and does not give its due to philosophy (his not at all new "argument from improbability" in The God Delusion is simply Occasm's razor, which means it is philosophy, not science)..Hi Massimo. I would agree with you that Dawkins' arguments are often philosophically naive. When I finally read "The God Delusion" recently, I thought that his argument from improbability (what he calls his "ultimate 747 argument") didn't make much sense. I thought he should have been appealing to the principle of parsimony (Occam's Razor) but wasn't. In any case, I think you're mistaken in saying that an argument from parsimony is philosophy, not science. The two cannot be separated. All of science is underpinned by the logic typically discussed under the rubric "philosophy of science", even though scientists don't usually refer to that logic and may not even be conscious of it. All scientific inferences depend on the principle of parsimony (or something like it). How else can you deal with the problem of the underdetermination of theory by evidence?

no, philosophy and science are distinguishable, and Occam's razor is a perfect example. You are correct that science cannot be done without philosophical assumptions, but that doesn't make those assumptions science, for the simple reason that they cannot be tested empirically.

Parsimony is widely used in science, but not universally so, and there is much debate in philosophy about different types of parsimony and their justification.

Massimo, I didn't mean to say that science and philosophy are one and the same, but that they overlap and cannot be separated in the simplistic way that you suggest.

You agree that the principle of parsimony is widely used in science. It follows that an appeal to parsimony does not by itself prevent an inference (say to the non-existence of God) from being a scientific one.

You seem to be confusing two different logical processes: (a) making an inference based on parsimony; and (b) justifying the principle of parsimony.

I assure you that I'm not confusing anything at all, and that I am not making any simplistic distinctions. I have published technical papers on the complex relationship between science and philosophy, and I'll be happy to send you copies of them.

The principle of parsimony as applied by Dawkins is not science because he does not apply it to empirically verifiable claims. Science cannot falsify or otherwise reject the supernatural, but philosophy can in fact mount a strong challenge to "the god hypothesis." Dawkins is simply wrong when he claims that science can reject that hypothesis (which is not, strictly speaking, a hypothesis at all).

This great sci fi movie where a group of hyper-intelligent pan dimensional beings decided to finally answer the great question of Life, The Universe and everything.

To this end they built an incredibly powerful computer, Deep Thought. After the great computer programme had run (a very quick seven and a half million years) the answer was announced. It was 42. Sadly the ultimate question was unknown, therefore nothing was solved.

"If the universe is the answer, what's the question? " A friend once asked me after I think that the question is not well formulated, or is biased in itself. But that is how you can show that goedel the mathmatician that proved mathmatically that math was arbitrary was wrong, you can demostrate that if you include extra stuff in the theoreme then what goedel says fails

Massimo wrote: The principle of parsimony as applied by Dawkins is not science because he does not apply it to empirically verifiable claims..Massimo, I'm unclear now what your position is. Are you saying that Dawkins argument is not science (a) because it uses the principle of parsimony; or (b) because its conclusion (that God does not exist) is not empirically verifiable; or (c) neither of these conditions individually is enough to make his argument not science, but it's the combination of both that does it. Originally you argued (a). Now it looks like you're switching to (b). Also, it's not clear to me what you mean by "empirically verifiable". Do you mean falsifiable?

You've also introduced another new argument, based on the commonly made claim that science cannot reject the supernatural. I've yet to see a valid justification for this claim, and I don't accept it. Russell Blackford dealt with this claim quite thoroughly in the following blog posts:http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2009/05/nas-on-compatibility-of-science-and.htmlhttp://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2009/05/natural-and-supernatural-again.html

Perhaps I should clarify my own position. I myself wouldn't make the strong claim that the case against the existence of God is a scientific rather than philosophical one. I think this case lies in a grey area, where the terms are not sufficiently well-defined to make this a useful distinction. My position is that all inferences about reality have philosophical underpinnings, but they lie along a spectrum. Towards one end of the spectrum the philosophical underpinnings are relatively invisible and uncontroversial, and we all call these scientific inferences. Towards the other end of the spectrum the philosophical underpinnings are more visible and controversial, and these are the ones that people are reluctant to call scientific. My point is that it's not a simple dichotomy but a continuum. Various attempts have been made to treat it as a dichotomy by introducing simplistic demarcation criteria, such as natural/supernatural, falsifiable/unfalsifiable (and even whether the principle of parsimony is involved). But none of these attempts stands up to scrutiny.

I think we are actually much closer than it may seem. I too maintain that there is a continuum between science and philosophy (which is why I'm about to start a new academic journal dedicated to that very proposition: http://philosophyandtheoryinbiology.org/ ).

As far as the god "hypothesis" in particular, I think it is a case of philosophy strongly informed by science. My beef with Dawkins (other than on matters of style) is that his scientistic arrogance is bad for science and doesn't give enough credit to philosophy.

By empirically verifiable I did not mean falsifiable. There is a difference, as I'm sure you know, and philosophers have long moved past falsifiability (I have a book for the general public coming out in April on the subject: Nonsense on Stilts. How to Tell Science from Bunk. University of Chicago Press).

As for scientific investigations of the supernatural, I don't buy it. Since the supernatural is by definition outside the laws of nature and can violate them at will, I think it is impossible in principle for science to investigate it. That is *not*, however, to say that one cannot reasonably reject individual claims by religionists: the flood didn't happen, and the world is not 6000 years old. But even so, all a religionist has to say is that it *appears* that way because god cleverly set us up to test our faith (this is actual "reasoning" that has been put forth to me). At that point there is absolutely nothing that a scientist can argue, other than shake his head in disbelief and go get a beer to mourn human gullibility.

Besides, science is better off when it is *not* seen as a tool of atheists, just as a matter of pure public relations...

Massimo, I'm glad we're in agreement that there is a continuum between science and philosophy, and I note that you are no longer defending the claim I originally objected to--that Dawkins' argument is philosophy not science because it is based on the principle of parsimony--so I think I'll call it a day now even though there remain other points on which we disagree. Thanks for the discussion.

Pigliucci’s beliefs about the relationship between science and supernatural claims are lacking because he is not attacking the concept of the supernatural directly.

When discussing science (which I consider to be strongly contiguous with analytic philosophy), many defend the concept of a supernatural god or supernatural this-or-that by acting as though science deals with “laws” that certain types of phenomena could be “beyond” or “exempt from”. This is a total failure of conceptualization. Scientific “laws” do not describe rules that are enforced by the fabric of reality that the contents of reality might wish or be able to “break”. Scientific “laws” are simply precise descriptions of how reality works – they are descriptions of how things go, so to speak.

The notion of the supernatural hinges on the above idea and falls apart once this conceptual failure is recognized. One cannot imagine something – indeed, one can barely talk about it – without imagining how it is (how it is instantiated in reality) and what it does. The supernaturalist might object here that how a certain type of thing is and what it does wouldn’t have to be bound by natural laws, but this objection fails. For something to exist, it must exist in certain ways and not other ways – in other words, its reality must be precise (I whole-heartedly admit that I do not take truth relativism seriously). This is to therefore claim that there is an exact way in which the phenomena at hand exists and does certain things.

What’s the big deal? Once we recognize that anything that exists must exist in some precise sense, the notion that anything could be exempt from the basic structures of inquiry used in science and analytic philosophy dissolves. Some problems will be much more difficult to solve than others, and there may be problems which are unsolvable because of human limitations or limitations imposed by the universe, but there is no broad category which we can label “no science allowed”.

A last bastion for the defender of the concept of the supernatural – which Massimo is defending tangentially – is to simply say that “natural” means “material” and “supernatural” means “immaterial”. These could be considered valid uses of the respective terms, but they do not contain the same metaphysical baggage that the terms usually hold. My previous explanation should make it clear that if something is to be said to be “immaterial”, we still have no grounds whatsoever for exempting its nature from rational discussion or for believing that it doesn’t have a precisely describable nature.

The notion that within the concept of the supernatural one might find solutions to problems that seem difficult to understand from a material standpoint is pervasive within certain sectors of philosophical discourse. It is behind the notion that immaterial notions of mind can account for consciousness in a way that material notions don’t, and it may also be behind the notion that the physical universe must have been created by some sort of supernatural force. In the pursuit of truth, we will lose nothing if we kill the concept of the supernatural altogether.

Good point, Joseph. If the physical laws as we know them can be violated by some entity (whether or not we call that entity "supernatural"), that simply means that those laws are incomplete. For example, if God's actions are not constrained by the law "E=mc^2", then that law is only an approximation to the more accurate law "E=mc^2 except where God's actions are concerned".

As for scientific investigations of the supernatural, I don't buy it. Since the supernatural is by definition outside the laws of nature and can violate them at will, I think it is impossible in principle for science to investigate it.

If the supernatural never affects the natural world, then you'd be right, but that is of course not the case in the mind of 'religionists' (apart from theologians like Tillich). The point of the supernatural is to them the agency in the natural. If the natural laws are broken, can we not investigate that? This amounts to saying that after failing to explain a body of phenomena with many related facts and theories, it would be possible to conclude that some mischievous agent is behind them.

That is *not*, however, to say that one cannot reasonably reject individual claims by religionists: the flood didn't happen, and the world is not 6000 years old.

At the end of the day, it really isn't very interesting (and I think Dawkins agree here) to philosophically rule out ANY supernatural being, but much more so to rule out the ones people go around believing in.

Yes Richard, that is a very good way of describing this somewhat complex but very important point. If we were to say "God is not bound by the laws of nature", that would really just mean that God's abilities are supervenient with respect to the physical laws we presently know. It doesn't mean that God is some conceptually amorphous being with only qualitative properties or no definite properties at all. There is still one reality, and there is still a "way things go", so to speak.

I think the sort of mistake I am pointing out is common because people tend to think that the vagueness of their ideas can actually be reflected, in some strange way, in the actual objects of the beliefs themselves. Since they can't really conceive of God, they think that God could just be some magical divine person-deity-thing that "doesn't have to be logical" (gotta love that line) in the way the real world does. The same goes with magic: believers in magic seem to think that an event could lack a concrete, precise, quantifiable explanation because this vapid notion reflects their own way of conceiving of the event.

as I said, and my example makes clear, of course we can investigate claims about the physical world, such as the flood or the world's age. But we can in no way scientifically refute "arguments" such as "god made it look like that to test our faith."

That sort of god, by the way, is the fundamentalist one in which many people believe and that is causing so much trouble in the world, not the rarefied deistic variety.

Yes, Dawkins and I are critical of the same dangerous god. The difference is that D. thinks he can make a scientific argument against it, while I think one has to make a science-informed *philosophical* argument.

As for the inflated rhetoric, there are plenty of examples in The God Delusion, one being that the children of all religious people are being mentally abused because of the type of education they receive. That simply turns off 90% of the people, and it is grossly unfair to moderate and open-minded religionists.

one being that the children of all religious people are being mentally abused because of the type of education they receive.

As I recall (my copy is at home) Dawkins says that the indoctrination of children in faith schools are a form of mental abuse. I don't recall him saying that all religious parents do this (that would be inflated rhetoric).

"Mental abuse" is a strong term, and I am sure it will turn off some people (though my guess is that 90% is an inflated estimate), but I thank Dawkins for saying what I and many others feel about the matter. The truth offends.

Dawkins says that religious upbringing, not just schooling, is mental abuse. And that's not the truth, it's just inflated and inflammatory rhetoric. (Though I guess it depends on one's definition of "mental abuse.")

I view Dawkins' position, as stated by Pigliucci, as fine. In religious households, children are told what kind of women or men they should marry or even associate with. In Muslim households, the level of indoctrination can be even worse.

"But what about the moderates!" Pigliucci objects. Well, moderates are called moderates because they're half-ass religionists. Dawkins is criticizing people who are actually religious, not people who water down their religion so that they find it more palatable. In a book criticizing communism, I needn't criticize the entire leftward branch of economic theory. The same reasoning applies here.

well, we may have to agree to disagree here. To use your analogy, I think Dawkins is in fact ding precisely the equivalent of "criticizing the entire leftward spectrum of economic theory," and for no good reason.

I think Dawkins would agree that the degree of abuse is proportional to the degree of religious indoctrination, but in any case...

I was wondering if you had a response to my challenge to the concept of the supernatural. If my criticism is valid, it isn't even fair to say that the supernatural could exist in theory because the very concept would be incoherent.

Massimo said, Dawkins says that religious upbringing, not just schooling, is mental abuse. And that's not the truth, it's just inflated and inflammatory rhetoric. (Though I guess it depends on one's definition of "mental abuse.")

Dawkins said (TGD p. 318), "But if your whole upbringing, and everything you have ever been told by parents, teachers and priests, has led you to believe, really believe, utterly and completely, that sinners burn in hell (or some other obnoxious article of doctrine such as that a woman is the property of her husband), it is entirely plausible that words could have a more long-lasting and damaging effect than deeds. I am persuaded that the term 'child abuse' is no exaggeration when used to describe what teachers and priests are doing to children whom they encourage to believe in something like the punishment of unshriven mortal sins in an eternal hell."

He then goes on to document such cases where adults still suffer from a fear of hell, but that is pretty much all he says about 'mental abuse.'

Those are clearly not the same. He is talking about something specific that I think many "moderate" religious parents are not teaching their children (actually, I know plenty of protestant parents who do not teach their children this doctrine).

If you are referring to somewhere else, perhaps outside of TGD, please let me know where.

I know I said earlier that I was calling it a day, but as the discussion has continued I can't resist joining in again...

Massimo wrote: as I said, and my example makes clear, of course we can investigate claims about the physical world, such as the flood or the world's age. But we can in no way scientifically refute "arguments" such as "god made it look like that to test our faith.".If the correct scientific inference is that the earth is old, then this claim--that the earth is young but God made it appear old to test our faith--is inconsistent with what science tells us about the world. What's the difference between being inconsistent with what science tells us and being "scientifically refute[d]"? (You implied above that you don't accept falsificationism, so I assume you are not using "refute" to mean "falsify" in Popper's sense.)

It's the principle of parsimony--the same principle that is used throughout science--that tells us to prefer hypothesis A (the earth is 4.55 billion years old) over hypothesis B (the earth is young but God made it appear old to test our faith) or hypothesis C (the earth is 5 billion years old and all our dating techniques are flawed).

If we can't make a scientific judgement about which of these hypotheses is true and which are false, then science text books should not be stating that the earth is 4.55 billion years old.

BTW I agree that Dawkins' rhetoric is sometimes unnecessarily inflammatory, but I'm mainly concerned with the underlying arguments, not the rhetoric.

P.P.S. I'd like to add that, as it's Massimo who is invoking natural/supernatural as a demarcation criterion, the onus is really on him to provide a coherent definition that makes this a valid criterion, not on others to show that no such definition can possibly exist. Nevertheless, Russell Blackford does a good job of showing why the usual attempts all fail.

I'll also give a quick counterexample to Massimo's claim, based on a type of entity that is typically labelled "supernatural", namely vampires. Suppose that vampires really exist and that they are physically unable to enter a house uninvited, as most vampire fiction has it. Why should the methods of science not be used to study vampires? We can imagine using empirical observations and even experiments which would confirm such a law (the Law of Vampire Invitation). Massimo must either define "science" in such a way as to exclude such empirical studies, or else define "supernatural" in such a way as to exclude such phenomena (which would make his definition inconsistent with normal usage of the word).

I don't have TGD with me, but I'm pretty sure that Dawkins uses different language in other parts of the book. More to the point, his "child abuse" stick has been brought up in interviews, both in print and on video. That said, I agree that the doctrine of burning in hell is idiotic and has negative consequences on one's psyche. I know personally people who have been affected by it when children.

> What's the difference between being inconsistent with what science tells us and being "scientifically refute[d]"? <

The difference is that science has to *assume* natural laws, or at the least the non-arbitrariness of a phenomenon's behavior. If your vampires behave predictably, then they are not supernatural, they are just a different sort of natural phenomenon. But a god that can fake the fossil evidence just to have fun at our expense is absolutely and utterly unfalsifiable by scientific methods.

Why not just accept that science has limits and that its power derives in part precisely by the fact that it is so effective when properly applied?

Here is one of many examples of how what Dawkins says is perceived in the press: http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48252

But of course, you say, that's not necessarily what he said. Ok then:

On his own website, Dawkins runs the gamut from attacking pedophilia and belief in hell (both attacks justified, in my opinion) to more general statements, like this one: "Humphrey argues that, in the same way as Amnesty works tirelessly to free political prisoners the world over, we should work to free the children of the world from the religions which, with parental approval, damage minds too young to understand what is happening to them." (http://richarddawkins.net/article,118,Religions-Real-Child-Abuse,Richard-Dawkins)

Here is another quote from Dawkins, in an interview to the Humanist: "Which brings me to my point about mental child abuse. In a 1995 issue of the Independent, one of London's leading newspapers, there was a photograph of a rather sweet and touching scene. It was Christmas time, and the picture showed three children dressed up as the three wise men for a nativity play. The accompanying story described one child as a Muslim, one as a Hindu, and one as a Christian. The supposedly sweet and touching point of the story was that they were all taking part in this Nativity play. What is not sweet and touching is that these children were all four years old. How can you possibly describe a child of four as a Muslim or a Christian or a Hindu or a Jew? Would you talk about a four-year-old economic monetarist? Would you talk about a four-year-old neo-isolationist or a four-year-old liberal Republican? There are opinions about the cosmos and the world that children, once grown, will presumably be in a position to evaluate for themselves. Religion is the one field in our culture about which it is absolutely accepted, without question — without even noticing how bizarre it is — that parents have a total and absolute say in what their children are going to be, how their children are going to be raised, what opinions their children are going to have about the cosmos, about life, about existence. Do you see what I mean about mental child abuse?" (http://www.thehumanist.org/humanist/articles/dawkins.html) Again, I don't disagree with the basic point, but I don't think calling it "child abuse" is warranted.

A perfect example, in Dawkins' own live words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT3d5RFNATAWhile he is careful in making clear what he says to refute Collins' misrepresentation, note that he says that religious upbringing is child abuse -- no clarifications about specific religious doctrines.

Massimo wrote: > What's the difference between being inconsistent with what science tells us and being "scientifically refute[d]"? <.The difference is that science has to *assume* natural laws, or at the least the non-arbitrariness of a phenomenon's behavior. If your vampires behave predictably, then they are not supernatural, they are just a different sort of natural phenomenon..That makes no sense as a reply to the quoted question. I'll take it as a reply to my vampire example, but that leaves the quoted question unanswered.

I note that you failed to shoulder the burden of providing a definition for your natural/supernatural criterion. But this comment implies that you are defining supernatural to mean unpredictable. However, this is not what is normally meant by supernatural. If you meant that science cannot deal with the unpredictable, then you should have said so, instead of saying that science cannot deal with the supernatural. Supose I claimed that the moon is made of green cheese, and then defended this claim by defining "green cheese" to mean rock. I think you would agree that this is not a rational way to proceed. But this is analogous to what you have just done.

But a god that can fake the fossil evidence just to have fun at our expense is absolutely and utterly unfalsifiable by scientific methods..Well now you're appealing to falsifiability even though you seemed to reject this concept earlier:

Massimo (earlier): By empirically verifiable I did not mean falsifiable. There is a difference, as I'm sure you know, and philosophers have long moved past falsifiability.If you meant "refute" (the term you used above) rather than "falsify", then you have just repeated the same claim as before without addressing my objection to it.

Sorry, Massimo, but I expected a better standard of argument from you than this. If you don't have the time to consider my arguments carefully and write a thoughtful reply, then I suggest you say so and drop the subject.

Once again I urge you to read Russell Blackford's posts (or just the second one if you haven't got time for both), as he expresses all this much more clearly than I do.

this exchange is getting quite repetitive. I'm sorry you are disappointed by my level of scholarship, but I obviously don't seem to be able to get through. Let me give it one more try:

Once again, the difference between being inconsistent with science and being scientifically refuted is that for the latter to happen you have to play by the rules of science. If you reject those rules, then you are inconsistent, but you do not stand refuted.

Defining the supernatural is not as difficult as you make it to be. Concerning the links you posted, I usually don't have time to follow up on everything people direct e to, I'm not paid for doing this you know. I'd much rather people actually explain themselves rather than send others on long excursions to read other people's stuff. We are all too busy for that. But since you insisted several times, ok, I read Blackford's post (the second one).

Despite my poor scholarship, I am perfectly aware of Wittegnstein's "family resemblance" concept. Indeed, I even used it in a scholarly (!!) paper on the concept of biological species (Pigliucci, M. 2003. Species as family resemblance concepts: the (dis-)solution of the species problem? Bioessays 25(6):596-602.)

Blackford's point that there are different conceptions of the supernatural, and that the idea is therefore more like a family resemblance concept, does not at all imply that the concept is meaningless, incoherent, or even particularly difficult to work with. Science itself is one such concept, and it is certainly not meaningless, incoherent or impractical.

In all our discussions I have been assuming the judeo-christian-muslim concept of supernatural, which is indeed (partially) distinct from ideas concerning ghosts and the like. So?

Blackford' discussion of mind-body dualism is irrelevant to our debate. And no, nobody defines the supernatural as "whatever cannot be studied by science." That is just plain silly. Just about as silly is his definition of the supernatural as "whatever is not natural."

Really, I expected better scholarship and more cogent reasoning from someone you absolutely wanted me to read.

Back to your comments. No, I don't think supernatural means unpredictable. As my example should have made clear, but obviously failed to do so, I think of the supernatural as most people do (including philosophers): it is a willful and arbitrary suspension of the workings of nature (notice that I'm avoiding using the word "laws" because the very concept of natural law is actually philosophically controversial). As such, creationism is about the supernatural, vampires are not, in your example.

And finally, right, I wrote "falsify" but I meant "test empirically," I stand by my previous comments on falsifiability.

One more thing, as a way of background. The underlying reason for the objections I have been raising to Dawkins' claims is that he is a perfect example of the damage that comes to science (real, good, science) from taking a scientistic attitude.

Scientism, of course, is the notion that science is all-powerful and that everything can be subjected to its scrutiny, with the implication that if it is outside of science it is either worthless or incoherent (or worse, dangerous). It sells books well, but it hardly makes for reasoned discourse.

My problem with Dawkins also comes from another, usually little appreciated, perspective. Despite popular credence, he is not a scientist. He is a science writer with a former (brief) career in science. People should read Kim Sterelny's "Gould vs. Dawkins: The Survival of the Fittest" for some interesting insights into their rivalry, but when I taught a class using that book we also went into the primary literature output of both: to my surprise, it turned out that while Gould published technical papers almost until the end (like Sagan before him, to remain with what was, after all, the theme of this post), Dawkins' last technical paper (on the behavior of some social insects) dates from the mid-'70s, i.e. just about the time he switched full time to being a science writer with the publication of The Selfish Gene (which, again, is a popular book presenting the ideas of others, largely W.D. Hamilton and George Williams).

Of course, there is nothing wrong at all with this career change. We need more science popularizers, and Dawkins is a very good one. But please let's stop propagating the myth that he is a scientist. He ain't.

Massimo wrote: Once again, the difference between being inconsistent with science and being scientifically refuted is that for the latter to happen you have to play by the rules of science. If you reject those rules, then you are inconsistent, but you do not stand refuted.

Again, this is not responsive to my argument, which had nothing to do with whether a particular person should consider himself refuted. It was an argument about the general scientific status of a claim. If a claim is inconsistent with what science tells us, why should we not consider that claim to have been scientifically refuted?

Let me remind you of the context.

You had written: as I said, and my example makes clear, of course we can investigate claims about the physical world, such as the flood or the world's age. But we can in no way scientifically refute "arguments" such as "god made it look like that to test our faith.

I replied (in part): If the correct scientific inference is that the earth is old, then this claim--that the earth is young but God made it appear old to test our faith--is inconsistent with what science tells us about the world. What's the difference between being inconsistent with what science tells us and being "scientifically refute[d]"?

Thank you for taking the time to read Blackford's post. Of course I'm disappointed with your response. I think it's unfair to criticise Blackford for addressing definitions of the supernatural that seem "silly" to you. He was trying to cover all bases, and I can assure you that I've seen defenders of methodological naturalism try all the definitions that he considers. Anyway, the essential point seems to be that you don't think he considered an appropriate definition. So let's proceed to yours.

Massimo: ...I think of the supernatural as most people do (including philosophers): it is a willful and arbitrary suspension of the workings of nature...

I don't know what this means. What are "the workings of nature"? How does this concept differ from "natural laws"?

my response is perfectly appropriate to your argument. If one (anyone, not a particular creationist) rejects the assumptions of science, then his position is inconsistent with, but not refuted by, science. You've got to buy into the system to be able to be refuted by the system. I don't know how to make this any clearer.

I'm sure Blackford addressed "definitions" of the supernatural that have actually been used in one context or another, but given your insistence on absolutely reading his post I guess I was expecting something more substantial. Not your fault, of course.

By workings of nature I am talking about forces, regularities, and even laws (basically whatever set of causes makes nature work in non arbitrary ways). The reason I don't want to rely exclusively on laws is because, as I have already said, there is plenty of good philosophical doubt about the coherence of the concept of natural laws, or at the very least their actual existence.

Massimo: my response is perfectly appropriate to your argument. If one (anyone, not a particular creationist) rejects the assumptions of science, then his position is inconsistent with, but not refuted by, science. You've got to buy into the system to be able to be refuted by the system. I don't know how to make this any clearer.

Massimo, from my point of view you've simply ignored what I wrote. There seems to be such a total failure of communication between us that I think it would be pointless to continue this discussion. Let's cut our losses and call it a day.

I'm highly skeptical of the idea that the difference between Person A's and Person B's views matters in terms of whether they beliefs on evolution have been refuted by science or not. It makes no difference to me whether they think science is good or not, science still shows that their views are wrong-wrong-wrong-wrong.

Joseph, Massimo himself implicitly accepted that the term "scientifically refuted" could be used without reference to a particular person's acceptance of science, when he wrote:

But we can in no way scientifically refute "arguments" such as "god made it look like that to test our faith.

I wasn't asserting anything about the epistemic status of a claim that has been "scientifically refuted". I simply responded to Massimo by using the term in the same way that he had done. Yet he failed to recognise his own way of using the term and switched to using it in a different way.

I'm really baffled. I did not realize that my English and my thinking were so muddled! Ok, let me try one more time using a different approach.

The point I am trying to make is that in order for someone to accept that something has been scientifically refuted one has to agree that the methods and assumptions of science are valid. (I.e., one has to agree on a certain *philosophy* of science.) If he does not, then we can accuse him of being inconsistent (as in, being at odds) with science but not of being incoherent (i.e., not making sense).

Let's assume that an astrologer tells you something about how to predict the future and you say "I don't believe it." When the astrologer asks you why, you point out that some of the assumptions of astrology, like the existence of constellations, are flawed and you therefore don't think that anything an astrologer predicts has any validity at all.

You are not being "incoherent" here. Your conclusion is inconsistent (at odds) with the astrologer's, and that inconsistency derives from your rejection of the astrologer's methods.

Of course, you also happen to be right, while our creationist fellow is wrong. But being right/wrong is a much less damning thing than being incoherent.

Massimo, I'm impressed by your patience and persistence. You're probably like me in hating to leave a misunderstanding unresolved. Unfortunately, you're still missing the point. However, I've been giving this a lot of thought, and I think I can see where I've been unclear and how I can do better.

This particular thread of our discussion began with the following passage from you:

as I said, and my example makes clear, of course we can investigate claims about the physical world, such as the flood or the world's age. But we can in no way scientifically refute "arguments" such as "god made it look like that to test our faith."

Note that you referred to scientific refutation of a claim, namely the claim that "god made it look like that to test our faith."

Subsequently you wrote:

Once again, the difference between being inconsistent with science and being scientifically refuted is that for the latter to happen you have to play by the rules of science. If you reject those rules, then you are inconsistent, but you do not stand refuted.

The first sentence of this passage makes scientific refutation conditional on whether a person accepts the rules of science. This implies that we cannot simply say "claim X has been scientifically refuted", but must say something like "claim X has been scientifically refuted for person Y", or "claim X has been scientifically refuted for all people who accept the rules of science".

The second sentence of this passage introduces a red herring by telling us whether someone "stands refuted". Your most recent post has continued in this vein by telling us whether someone is "being incoherent". But the original issue was about whether a claim has been scientifically refuted, not whether a person stands refuted or is being incoherent. Your discourse on the latter topics has been interesting but irrelevant.

Taking all this into account, I suggest two possible interpretations...

A. If claim X is inconsistent with what science tells us, we can say "claim X has been scientifically refuted" (but that does not mean that a person who makes claim X stands refuted or is being incoherent).

B. If claim X is inconsistent with what science tells us, we can say "claim X has been scientifically refuted for people who accept the rules of science". We can never simply say "claim X has been scientifically refuted".

> Taking all this into account, I suggest two possible interpretations...

A. If claim X is inconsistent with what science tells us, we can say "claim X has been scientifically refuted" (but that does not mean that a person who makes claim X stands refuted or is being incoherent).

B. If claim X is inconsistent with what science tells us, we can say "claim X has been scientifically refuted for people who accept the rules of science". We can never simply say "claim X has been scientifically refuted". <

I would say both! (A) should be obvious, I hope. (B) contains the clause "for people who accept..." and that clause is always implied. We don't need to actually say it, but it's there.

Now, if you've read anything else on this blog you realize that I am not for a moment entertaining the position that rejecting science's rules is a smart move. But it is philosophically possible, so that doing that doesn't necessarily make someone an idiot. It does, however, put the burden of proof on him to tell us what other way of knowing reality he's got that works better than science...

Finally, let's take a different example: someone says "I don't believe that 2+2 = 4 (within a decimal system). That person is not only demonstrably wrong, but in fact incoherent. For him to say that doesn't just mean that he rejects the methods of mathematics, it means that he has no idea of what he's talking about.

Thanks for persisting, I think we both clarified if not what we mean at least how we express it.

Massimo, now that we've resolved the confusion over "scientifically refuted", let's proceed with our discussion.

You wrote: as I said, and my example makes clear, of course we can investigate claims about the physical world, such as the flood or the world's age. But we can in no way scientifically refute "arguments" such as "god made it look like that to test our faith."

The objection I was trying to express (but did so poorly) is that science tells us a particular story about how the world came to be the way it is, but "god made it look like that to test our faith" implies a different story. So "god made it look like that to test our faith" is inconsistent with what science tells us, and therefore can be considered scientifically refuted.

I was a little concerned before when you accepted both my interpretations A and B. It should have been one or the other. Now it seems you're rejecting A (which you said was obvious!) and going for B alone. Even with B, you said that we don't actually need to state the rider "for people who accept...", because it's always implied. But now you're insisting that we have to add a rider after all.

You seem to have a big problem with the term "scientifically refuted". But it was you who first used it. Personally I'd be inclined to use some other expression. Instead of saying "claim X has been scientifically refuted" we could say "science tells us that claim X is false". Would you be more comfortable with that?

to say something like "science tells us that claim X is false" is fine. So it is to say "science refutes X" IF one understands, implicitly or not, that such refutation/rejection is not an absolute statement (as it would be if we were talking about logic or math).

That's the problem I'm concerned with: when someone like Dawkins uses science to "refute" supernatural claims he is overstepping the epistemic limits of science, and this should be made clear. As I said before, such overstepping is scientistic, and it hurts good science.

The problem, as it's clear from our exchange, is with language. It's hard to misunderstand something like "X is inconsistent with scientific findings." But using words like "refutes" seems to make a much stronger statement. Such statement should either be avoided or followed by a clear acknowledgment that it is intended within certain epistemological parameters.

Here is another analogy: another word I am uncomfortable with and call my colleagues on when they use it is "scientific proof." Proofs don't belong to science (again, they do belong to math and logic). Now I understand that most people simply mean that something has been confirmed by science beyond reasonable doubt. But "proof" is a much stronger word than that, and should be used with appropriate caution in order, again, not to do a disservice to science.

Massimo, going back to your first mention of the "supernatural" in this thread, you wrote "Science cannot falsify or otherwise reject the supernatural". That's the assertion I'm contesting, so I'll follow your lead and use the word "reject".

Hopefully you will agree now that science can reject the claim that "god made it look like that to test our faith". So, if this is a supernatural claim, you must accept that science can reject supernatural claims. Or do you want to say that this is not a supernatural claim? In that case, please give me some examples of supernatural claims.

P.S. You defined "supernatural" as follows: I think of the supernatural as most people do (including philosophers): it is a willful and arbitrary suspension of the workings of nature (notice that I'm avoiding using the word "laws" because the very concept of natural law is actually philosophically controversial).

If the workings of nature are suspended, then something is liable to happen that would not have happened if the workings of nature had not been suspended. This is liable to be inconsistent with what science tells us, since science tells us what happens if the workings of nature are not suspended. So science can potentially reject a claim about a suspension of the workings of nature, i.e. the supernatural.

No, of course I wouldn't agree that science can reject a claim like "god made it look like that to test our faith." What sort of scientific evidence could possibly reject that claim?

And no, if the workings of nature are arbitrarily and wilfully suspended (i.e., there has been a miracle) again science would not have anything to say about it, except perhaps "something possibly happened" (if god didn't cover his tracks well enough).

I really need to ask you: why do you insist in arrogating epistemic powers to science that it doesn't have? What do you gain from that, other than getting into endless discussions like this one?

“why it is that the so-called holy books don’t tell us anything at allabout how the universe really is.”

This critique isn't fair. It judges God and Scripture by your own arbitrary standard. If Scripture doesn’t provide certain revelations,it can’t be Scripture.

However, God does have other ways by which He validates His claims.The miracles of the Bible seem to suit His goals better. They are more direct and can be seen by all. Their validating power doesn’t depend upon accepting expert testimony which requires putting ones trust in what the majority of scientists have to say. Jesus’ miracles were soutterly undeniable that His detractors were forced to acknowledge them and to justify their own denial by claiming that He performed them by the power of Satan.

God also uses fulfilled prophecy. The experiences of the Jewish people poignantly reflect this proof. Moses informed Israel that God had given them the strength to acquire wealth (Deuteronomy 8), but they would take credit for their successes and reject god to their own detriment. Consequently, they would be defeated by their enemies, dispersed, hated, and driven from one nation to another. Nevertheless,God would bring them back to their land, and He accomplished this on three separate occasions.

Even though it doesn’t seem to be Christ’s first concern to providescientific fore-knowledge, Scripture nevertheless condescends to provide this very thing, contrary to your assertion otherwise. Here is a small sampling:

1. Scripture claims that the universe was created, rather than having existed eternally, as the atheist had supposed.

2. Genesis 1:14 states that the “lights in the expanse of the sky…[would] serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years.” Indeed,science has subsequently found that the movements of the stars are so regular that they do serve as “signs” and markers.

3. Hebrews 11:3 claims that what we see had not been made “out of what was visible.”

4. Jeremiah 33:25 states that God accomplishes His purposes through“fixed laws of heaven and earth.” Although science demonstrated thatphenomena operated according to laws, the Bible long before positedthe operation of the God’s laws. (Also Job 38:33)

5. Scripture also predated science in its understanding of the watercycle. Job 36:27 states "He draws up the drops of water, which distill as rain to the streams.” (Also Amos 9:6)

6. Scripture also demonstrates an awareness of dinosaurs. One evidence of this comes from Psalm 74:14.

7. While you claim that Scripture is unaware of the vastness of theuniverse, Jeremiah 33:22 states, “I will make the descendants of David my servant and the Levites who minister before me as countless as the stars of the sky and as measureless as the sand on the seashore. "(Also Job 11:7-8; 22:12)

8. Scripture is also aware of a round earth and an expanding universe. He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in (Isaiah 40:22; 42:5).

9. Scripture claims that the earth isn’t flat or rests on the back ofa huge turtle, but instead it rests on nothing (Job 26:7).

You conclude that,

“The various gods people worship are simply far too small for theuniverse we actually inhabit, which is no surprise once we accept the rather obvious truth that it is us who made the gods in our image, not the other way around.”

On the contrary, what can be greater than the God of the Bible! If our omniscient, omnipotent God is “too small” to explain our universe, what then can? Are you suggesting that your natural, unintelligent forces are adequate to explain the origin of life, DNA, the cell,consciousness, freewill, the unchanging laws, the fine-tuning of the universe, and the existence of moral absolutes?

No, of course I wouldn't agree that science can reject a claim like "god made it look like that to test our faith." What sort of scientific evidence could possibly reject that claim?

Massimo, you've already agreed that this claim is inconsistent with what science tells us, and you agreed that it can be considered scientifically refuted "assuming one accepts the methods and assumptions of science". Is this so different from saying that science can reject the claim? Or have you already forgotten what you agreed to a couple of posts ago?

Massimo:I really need to ask you: why do you insist in arrogating epistemic powers to science that it doesn't have? What do you gain from that, other than getting into endless discussions like this one?

Why do you insist on imposing unjustifiable demarcation criteria on science? What do you gain from that, other than getting into endless discussions like this one?

Richard: Why do you insist on imposing unjustifiable demarcation criteria on science?

My inner cynic wants to say that he does so because he is a philosopher of science, and the job of a philosopher of science is to take huge categories of inquiry (such as Evolutionary Psychology) and say that they're not scientific.

But I'm more than a cynic. Massimo may also be inclined to budge against an annoying trend towards using the word "science" to mean "anything that makes sense". Popular critic of religion Sam Harris does this all the time - he has more-or-less stated that the word "science" should just be understood to mean "reason" and that the word "faith" should be understood as "irrationality". So if science is just making sense, and faith is just not making sense, then of course belief in God is unscientific.

But the above way of arguing is really stupid. We should not let our terms expand like swamps until they cover way more than they're supposed to. If we are to be true to the way the word "science" is usually used, then science should not be said to encompass Analytic Philosophy. And this is where I'm beginning to see the point Massimo may (or may not!) be making. Any decent Analytic Philosopher can leave a religious believer bleeding in the dirt, but that doesn't make his argument "scientific" just because it makes sense.

But I don't really buy the idea that science (in the proper sense) has nothing to say about claims like "God made the universe appear the way it does to test our faith". What science does have to say is that that statement is deliberately engineered to avoid scientific testing of theological claims (such as the claim that Jesus rose from the dead). I don't think science is so value-neutral as to just say "well if you want to make untestable claims, fine, I don't object."

thanks, that's pretty much my reasoning. We may disagree (very little) only on your last few sentences. Science, I maintain, still doesn't have anything to say to untestable claims of any sort. But that doesn't mean that any scientist has to take them seriously... :)

Hi again Joseph. I can think of another couple of reasons why people want a simplistic demarcation criterion. One is that it provides a quick way of rejecting pseudoscientific claims. For example, critics of Intelligent Design often say that ID is a supernatural concept and therefore by definition cannot be science. This argument was even made in the judge's summation at the Dover trial. The trouble is that, as well as being unsound, that argument plays into the hands of ID advocates, allowing them to say that mainstream scientists cannot be trusted to judge ID on the facts because they are following a rule that excludes ID from science regardless of any evidence. Of course critics of ID also make many sound arguments against it, but ID advocates naturally try to focus attention on the unsound argument.

Another reason is probably the fear that, unless refutations of religious claims can be unequivocally excluded from science, some people may try to include such refutations in science classes and science text books. But that's not what the critics of "accommodationism" want. They think science should be taught without reference to religious claims, and let students judge for themselves whether science is in conflict with their religious beliefs. But don't prejudge the issue by telling them, "Don't worry, your supernatural religious beliefs are beyond the reach of science."

After further reflection, I must admit I was wrong about the claim "God made it look like that to test our faith." I was focusing on the fact that it entails an inconsistency with what science tells us, and losing sight of the fact that the claim states that the world is not as science tells us. In other words, it isn't a claim of a fact that's inconsistent with what science tells us; it's a claim that a fact is inconsistent with what science tells us. So the inconsistency can't be a reason to say science refutes it. Another way of looking at it is that science only deals with facts about reality. But this claim says something about the relationship between science and reality (a matter of epistemology).

Of course, if you think it's irrational to reject what science plainly shows, then you'll think the claim is irrational. But that's a matter of epistemology, not science. (With hindsight I think this was the point Massimo was trying to make.)

By the way, this property of the claim has nothing to do with "the supernatural". It would have the same property if you removed God and just claimed "the world is not the way science shows it to be". You could even substitute "I" for God! ("Science shows I don't have the power to make worlds? Well, that's because I've made it look like that.") The brain-in-a-vat scenario is also similar.

> Another way of looking at it is that science only deals with facts about reality. But this claim says something about the relationship between science and reality (a matter of epistemology).

Of course, if you think it's irrational to reject what science plainly shows, then you'll think the claim is irrational. But that's a matter of epistemology, not science. (With hindsight I think this was the point Massimo was trying to make.) <

Exactly right, good way to rephrase the issue. As for your point that this does not apply just to the supernatural, yeah, I can agree, but it certainly counts as an example.

Daniel Dennett: "We have excellent internal evidence for believing that science in general is both reliable and a product of naturalistic forces only—natural selection of genes and natural selection of memes. An allegiance to naturalism and to current evolutionary theory not only doesn’t undermine the conviction that our scientific beliefs are reliable; it explains them. Our ‘‘godlike’’ powers of comprehension and imagination do indeed set us apart from even our closest kin, the chimpanzees and bonobos, but these powers we have can all be accounted for on Darwin’s bubble-up theory of creation, clarified by Turing’s own strange—and wonderful —inversion of reasoning."

The Blackford, "Supernatural and Natural, again" blog post linked above is garbage. However, I think I've said enough on the issue (including directly with Blackford), let the group of atheist and religionist continue to claim that science can study the supernatural, it's hardly worth trying to dissuade their hardened belief system on the subject. They can try, but won't likely dislodge reality.

You affirmatively quoted Daniel Dennett: "We have excellent internal evidence for believing that science in general is both reliable and a product of naturalistic forces only—natural selection of genes and natural selection of memes…”

What evidence do you have that “naturalistic forces” are even at play? While we all agree that there are laws, forces, and that objects respond in accordance to them, science is unable to directly test, perceive or quantify that “naturalistic forces” are responsible. Perhaps these laws find their origin and being within the mind of God?

In fact, if these forces or laws all find their origin within the mind of God, we have found that singularity, that unifying principle that unites and explains all.

One of the most memorable passages of Carl Sagan's The Demon Haunted World was him in correspondence to those claiming abduction. I found it fascinating that he used Fermat's Last Theorem as a challenge to demonstrate the authenticity of the experience.

I found that incredibly compelling, it's such a simple statement yet incredibly profound in its implications.

I always wonder though if America really was a more scientific place when Carl Sagan was at the helm of popularising science. And as for atheism too, what was belief like a few decades ago when Carl Sagan was devastating towards religion as opposed to the intolerable Dawkins and Harris. Is the reminiscence about this great man getting in the way of having an objective look at the role that Sagan has played compared to the "new atheists"?

Herbert Spencer would have been greatly annoyed if any one had called him an imperialist, and therefore it is highly regrettable that nobody did. But he was an imperialist of the lowest type. He popularized this contemptible notion that the size of the solar system ought to over-awe the spiritual dogma of man. Why should a man surrender his dignity to the solar system any more than to a whale? If mere size proves that man is not the image of God, then a whale may be the image of God; a somewhat formless image; what one might call an impressionist portrait. It is quite futile to argue that man is small compared to the cosmos; for man was always small compared to the nearest tree. But Herbert Spencer, in his headlong imperialism, would insist that we had in some way been conquered and annexed by the astronomical universe. He spoke about men and their ideals exactly as the most insolent Unionist talks about the Irish and their ideals. He turned mankind into a small nationality.

Just a point on unpredictability - we can't fully predict the weather.

Predictability does not dictate whether we consider meteorology a science - or natural.

This is the basic uselessness of the concept of the supernatural - something can be completely unknown and still perfectly natural - as in it is a product of reality.

The only way something can be supernatural is for it to exist outside of reality, and hence not be real.

The 747 argument: Makes sense in context.

Dawkins' argument is a counter-argument to the argument from complexity, in which the complexity of the universe is seen as being highly unlikely without a yet more complex creator - Dawkins merely points out that this shifts the levels of improbability higher given the basic premise of complexity out of nothing being unlikely.

As to Dawkins: I automatically discount all arguments from tone. Sorry, but we refer to ad-hominems as being sophistry for a reason - what matters is not whether Dawkins or Hitchens are nice about it, but whether they are right.

That the very best the religious can come up with is criticising Dawkins' tone, it shows that his arguments are potent enough to scare them.

And lets face it, for all the fire the "New Atheists" come under, the "New Theists" haven't exactly presented bountiful levels of substance for all their criticisms of form.

“And this vast number of worlds, the enormous scale of the universe, in my view has been taken into account, even superficially, in virtually no religion, and especially no Western religions.”

you write,

That seems exactly right, and something that is hardly discussed even in debates between atheists and theists: human religions are completely oblivious to the enormity of space.

But then Sagan also said this,

Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite number of deaths and rebirths.

It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, no doubt, by accident, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the earth or the sun and about half of the time since the big bang. And there are much longer time scales still.

There is the deep and the appealing notion that the universe is but the dream of the god who after a 100 Brahma years… dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep… and the universe dissolves with him… until after another Brahma century… he starts… recomposes himself and begins again the dream… the great cosmic lotus dream.

Meanwhile… elsewhere… there are an infinite number of other universes… each with its own god… dreaming the cosmic dream…

These great ideas are tempered by another perhaps still greater it is said that men may not be the dreams of the gods but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.

Although Hinduism/Jainism/Buddhism etc., are not religions or even faiths - a term applicable only to the Abrahamic faiths - as traditions they have a very good handle on the scale of the cosmos. The earliest notions of infinity come to us from the Jain thinkers, and Buddhist thinkers came up with some truly mind boggling numbers, while the Jains distinguished between five types of infinity.

“And this vast number of worlds, the enormous scale of the universe, in my view has been taken into account, even superficially, in virtually no religion, and especially no Western religions.”

you write,

That seems exactly right, and something that is hardly discussed even in debates between atheists and theists: human religions are completely oblivious to the enormity of space.

But then Sagan also said this,

Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite number of deaths and rebirths.

It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, no doubt, by accident, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the earth or the sun and about half of the time since the big bang. And there are much longer time scales still.

There is the deep and the appealing notion that the universe is but the dream of the god who after a 100 Brahma years… dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep… and the universe dissolves with him… until after another Brahma century… he starts… recomposes himself and begins again the dream… the great cosmic lotus dream.

Meanwhile… elsewhere… there are an infinite number of other universes… each with its own god… dreaming the cosmic dream…

These great ideas are tempered by another perhaps still greater it is said that men may not be the dreams of the gods but rather that the gods are the dreams of men.

Although Hinduism/Jainism/Buddhism etc., are not religions or even faiths - a term applicable only to the Abrahamic faiths - as traditions they have a very good handle on the scale of the cosmos. The earliest notions of infinity come to us from the Jain thinkers, and Buddhist thinkers came up with some truly mind boggling numbers, while the Jains distinguished between five types of infinity.

Regarding Sagan's book, I'm quite anxious to start reading it. I bought it a while ago, but it has been in the book queue since... As soon as I finish reading Barker's "Godless" and Judson's "Dr. Tatiana's...", there I go... :-)

The "multiple comings of Jesus" part reminded me of something that happened to me in 2003 or 2004. There was going to be a life on Mars presentation followed by discussion here in town. I decided to go, since I've always been interested in these things, and didn't pay too much attention to the announcement in the email. Turns out, the presentation was by some random guy whose best qualification for giving it seemed to be that his job was as "quality control engineer" or something like that, whatever it was. So far so good. I also noticed that the presentation (at a pub's table, with some 10 people present) was sponsored by a ministry here at the university, and the small print in the email actually hinted at the final conclusion that life elsewhere in the universe was not to be. OK, so the talk was going to be even more entertaining than I originally expected!

Long story short, John (the presenter) said that life elsewhere was not possible because god could not afford losing his son more than once. Seriously, that's what he said. It was taped by the minister there and was available on line long ago, might still be.

Now, where did he get that stupid idea? (he had many more stupid things to say, but let's ignore those for now) Unless, of course, the god he believes in (the Christian type) is not omnipotent, in which case it would be a plausible reason for life existing only here. If there was any god(s) to begin with.